Thursday, 7 June 2018

August in Berlin

One of the trips I make every year with Dolores is a trip to Berlin for the Berliner Biermeile. A festival that stretches for a mile or so along Karl-Marx Allee.

I love it because it's the ultimate anti-geek festival, where Peroni, Carlsberg and Desperados rub shoulders with regional Czech breweries. It looks as if the beer selection is made by blindly sticking pins into a list. But what do I care? There are always more than enough Lagers for me to wrap my chops around. I do like a good Lager. And they're generally very poorly represented at festivals.

I also like Berlin. And - for the moment, at least - it's cheap. Beer and eating out often cost only about half what they do in Amsterdam. I doubt that will last, so best to take advantage of it while I can.

When I say I like Berlin, I really mean the former East Berlin. I rarely vbenture into the West of the city. There's no real point. All the major museums are in the East. As is the Augustiner pub with Bayerischer Anstich.

It helps that Dolores is a fan of Berlin, too. Especially the low, low prices.

This is the full report of our 2017 trip to Berlin.

Flying to Berlin

Our flight is at a fairly civilised time, a little after noon. No need to get up at a silly time.

But we don’t leave it too late. Not when it can take two hours to get
through security. It’s been rather chaotic at Schiphol this summer.
Massive queues and people missing flights.

But it does have an upside. They’ve had to hire extra people to work in
security. And one of them is Andrew. Yes, the lazy git has finally found
a job. And quite a fun one, as he gets to boss people around. He even
gets a uniform.

“Can you get a gun, Andrew?” Alexei asked him hopefully. “No, of course not.”

Check in is at Departures 1A. Never been there before. I realise that
it’s the new, temporary departure hall tacked onto hall 1. Which has me
worrying. Is it going to be cramped and packed?

It turns out neither. There’s virtually no queue at security and we’re
through in a couple of minutes. Then we’re stone free. No passport
control as we’re headed for a Schengen country.

Our conservative planning has left us with some time to kill. Where
could we possibly do that? If only there were some sort of place you
could sit and take refreshment.

The Grand Café in Pier C has an obvious Heineken tie, flogging their Pils as well as Affligem Abbey beers.

“There’s a pump with a Paulaner sign there.” I say, pointing to the bar
“And that bloke sat at the bar has a glass of it in front of him. I
think we can be pretty certain they’re selling it.”

I go for Affligem Tripel. It’s a fair enough beer. And the strongest one on offer. I’ve time for two.

We didn’t bother checking in bags. We haven’t brought that much with us.
I’m a little puzzled by our seats: window and centre. I always get an
aisle seat. Then I remember: I wasn’t able to reserve seats when I
booked. And I forgot to do it later. Oh well. At least it’s a short
flight.

I bought a sandwich landside just in case. Sometimes KLM just give you a
piece of cake, which is no use to me being a non-sugar-eater. We are
given a sandwich. Which looks like cheese, but is actually egg. Dolores
tells me this a couple of times, but I’m still not totally convinced.
“But it looks like cheese.” I say mournfully. Whatever it is, I wash it
down with red wine.

One of the bad features of Berlin is Tegel airport. Hopelessly outdated,
cramped and frustratingly difficult to get to and from. Especially when
you consider it’s bang in the city.

There’s no choice but to start out with a bus. Berlin’s many U- and
S-Bahn lines all manage to dodge past it. This time, we decide to get
off the bus earlier, after just a couple of stops where it first
connects to the S-Bahn. Which we take to Frankfurter Allee, where we
take the U-Bahn for a couple of stops, then switch to a tram. Way too
many changes. And lots of walking up and down stairs.

Luggage dumped, we head off to Aldi to stock up on essentials like wine.
Our hotel room has a small kitchen. Including a fridge, which is dead
handy. Somewhere to keep the milk for our tea cool. I don’t bother
getting any beer. Because the Getränkemarkt next door is our next stop.
Where they’ve a pretty wide range of beers.

I pick out a selection of stuff. Some from Berlin, some from other bits
of the former DDR, some Bavarian. It only comes to 15 euros. And a third
of that is for one 75 cl bottle of Maisel & Friends.

“There’s a beer garden further down this street. Do you fancy coming here later?” Dolores says she’s up for it.

There’s a big, enigmatic building we’d been wondering about ever since
first walking around this bit. It turns out the beer garden is in its
grounds. On closer inspection the big thing is clearly a former
industrial building. Which now seems to have been taken over by artists.

We sit down and I order a Berliner Bürgerbräu Rodkelchen. “That’s odd,
Dolores.” “Why?” “Berliner Bürgerbräu closed several years ago.

Fitting in with with hipsteriness, we order hamburgers. Mine’s rather messy to eat by hand.

After a second beer I ask: “Shall we go to Jägerklause?” It’s another, rather more rough and ready beer garden. Cheaper, too.

We finish the evening there with a beer or two, as night slowly folds around us and the lights come up.

Tränenpalast

We’re up pretty early for a busy day. Lots of stuff planned. Starting with brekkie.

Breakfast is one of the main reason we stay at Opstalboom. They have a
good buffet spread. Fried stuff for me, herring and cake for Dolores.
Though obviously she doesn’t eat the two together.

The weather isn’t as hot as some previous years here. But it has been
for the last couple of weeks. Leaving the hotel pretty warm inside. So
we leave our room’s windows wide open when we set off for
Friedrichstrasse.

I was dead excited when I heard Tränenpalast had
reopened as a museum. It’s a place I spent many a miserable hour in the
1980’s. Being where customs and passport controls were carried out for
those leaving East Berlin via Friedrichstrasse station. Something I did a
few dozen times.*

It’s was pretty weird. First you put tour bags on a table for the
customs people to look through. Often very thoroughly. After which you
were confronted by a wall of doors made from cheap laminated wood. You’d
be directed through one of these to a narrow corridor, on one side of
which was a border guard behind glass. Who’d really check your passport
and visa.

Once you got past him, you were through into the station itself. Or at
least the two westbound platforms. You were hermetically sealed off from
the platforms serving the east. The photo of a model of the layout
below should give you some idea of how it looked.

As well as the building itself, there’s an exhibition about the wall and
the people who crossed over it. Hard to imagine today what an
impenetrable barrier it was. Being in Berlin with Dolores was always
weird. With the wall never far away. Being able to see, sometimes just
50 metres away, parts of the city she couldn’t visit.

I’m glad to be reminded of what it all looked like. Because obviously I
couldn’t take photos. That would have got you into all sorts of shit.

But Tränenpalast only tells half the story. There was a similar hall for
those entering East Berlin. That was in the main part of the station
and has totally disappeared. There you left through a single windowless
door. With no handle on the East Berlin side. Dolores would wait,
staring at a blank wall, until I popped through the door without
warning. Strange days.

Our original plan was to head up to Prenzlauerberg yet. But time is
running short. We’re meeting Joe Stange at 13:00 at the beer festival.
No way we’ll make that if we go first to Prenzlauerberg. So we head back
to Friedrichshain.

We’re supposed to be meeting Joe at lamppost number 27. Which fortunately isn’t too much of a walk.

I love the Biermeile. Or the International Berlin Beer Festival,
to give it its proper English name. It’s the least pretentious festival
I know. Every type of beer, including mass-market beers, like Newcastle
Brown, Carlsberg and Desperados. Lots of very, very unfashionable
beers. Plus some craft shit.

I go for just one thing: Lager. Because there’s always some interesting
Easter European Lager to be had. Everyday Czech and Polish drinking
Lagers. The type of beer you won’t find in a geek beer bar.

No sign of Joe at lamppost 27. I wander around a bit looking for him. No
luck. I go back and sit with Dolores. And we both drink some nice Czech
stuff. I even took some notes. Starting with a beer brewed just outside
Berlin:

Bernauer Torwächter Dunkel (12º Plato, 4.9% ABV)
Nice dark colour, but a bit bland. Not nasty, mind, and good for
unthirsting me. (According to their website, it uses Munich malt as
base.)

The table we're sitting at is a lovely old Schultheiss
barrel. Which looks like it was in use until the late 1960's, judging by
the inspection marks:

There are plenty of tattoos on display. That’s the joy of summer, seeing
all the shitty leg and back tattoos people have disfigured themselves
with. Lots of facial hair, too. But more moustaches and mullets than
beards and buns.

“I thought Bauer closed several years ago. Yet they have their beers here.”**

I get all excited when I go past the stand of a polish brewery. They’ve
got Grodziskie. Never had a Polish-brewed example before.

Złoty Pies Grodziskie
Yeah, it’s actually pretty right for the style: smoky and bitter. Only
slight minus – not totally clear. Then again, neither was the one I
collaborated on at Jopen. It tastes pretty similar to that beer, which
we tried to make as authentic as possible.

We stay and slowly sup for a couple of hours. Then take the tram M10 to
Prenzlauerberg. Dolores wants to see an exhibition in Kulturbrauerei
about everyday life in the DDR.

“Can’t you remember what it was like?” I quip. “Very funny, Ronald.”

It’s sad in a way, coming to an exhibition here. Because I can remember
when this was a functioning brewery, operating as Schultheiss.

There’s a mockup of a DDR kitchen.

“Oh look, they’ve got the same egg cups as us, Dolores.”

“Everyone had them.” That makes me feel a bit less special.

When we’re done, it’s time to find somewhere to eat. A Vietnamese place.
Had some nice Vietnamese food around this way last year. And I do love
me some Vietnamese food.

Rather than us both trudge around, I stay and look after our stuff in Zum Schusterjungen while Dolores goes searching. May as well have a beer while I’m here. I go for Märkisches Landsman, a Schwarzbier.

I remember this pub from the 1980’s. It features in my very first beer
article, a guide to pubs in East Berlin that was published in What’s
Brewing in 1989. A random reserved sign on one table really brought back
memories of the DDR days. There were always a few spread around,
effectively putting out of service half the tables. Just because the
staff couldn't be arsed to work them.

“I’m trying to remember if this was a communist pub or a Nazi pub in the
1930’s. It was one of the two.”*** Amazingly, Dolores can’t remember
the place. I thought I was the one with the bad memory.

Dolores gets a Pho. I have a beef noodle dish. To which I add a load of
chili. Yum. Even better, they have bottled Augustiner Helles. I let
Dolores try it. “Tastes like beer.” Praise, indeed, from Dolores. She
likes her beer to taste like beer.

It’s not that late when we get to our hotel. So we go and sit on the
roof terrace. Gazing out towards the Fernseherturm as the sun begins to
set, colouring the clouds first orange then purple then finally inky
black. The beer festival, despite being 400 metres away and there being
plenty of large buildings inbetween, is audible. Glad we’re not staying
on Karl-Marx-Allee.

“Did you ever go up the Fernseherturm?”

“Are you joking? They charged 5 marks. It took me two hours to earn that. A ridiculous price.”

Putting that into my sort of context, a half litre of draught beer was 1 mark at the time in East Berlin. I can see her point.

We don’t stay out late. Loads more to do tomorrow.

* While we were waiting to be married, I travelled to Berlin to see
Dolores two or three weekends a month. Sometimes to sort out some of the
documentation we needed to wed. Mostly just to meet. Jumping on a train
in Amsterdam in the evening, I’d arrive at Friedrichstrasse at some
ungodly early hour. 7 am or so. Then I’d have the fun of getting through
the deliberately obstructive border regime. Dolores would be waiting
behind the blank door for me. In Berlin you could get a 24-hour visa on
the border. I needed two for the weekend. At 11:59 I’d go through
Tränenpalast and join the queue to enter East Berlin again. An
indeterminate time later, I’d pop through the door and (thankfully)
always find Dolores waiting for me. Sunday evening, I’d take the night
train back to Amsterdam. And go straight into work from the station.
Neither of the trains had any sort of sleeper accommodation. Just
compartments. When I was lucky, I got a whole bench to stretch out on.
Otherwise, it was sleeping sitting up. Like being on a plane. But
without the free drinks. After a while, I got to recognise people who
were doing the same as me. Crossing straight back on a day visa. Dolores
started to see the same faces every night her side of the border. Happy
days? Ones I didn’t fully understand. And where I didn’t realise how
fragile everything was. It all came crumbling down 18 months after our
marriage.
** Bauer beers are currently brewed at Brauhaus Hartmannsdorf.
*** Zum Schusterjungen was the communist pub. Zum Hackepeter opposite (which no longer exists) was the Nazi pub.

Berliner Biermeile

It turns out Joe meant lamppost 47 yesterday. No wonder I couldn’t find
him. We’ve arranged to meet there again today. It’s where Kout na Šumavě
is. So I’m not arguing.

Feeling all health-conscious, I have some fruit as well as fried stuff for breakfast.

“That means I can treat myself to an extra couple of beers.”

“You’ll do that anyway, Ronald.”

“You’re so cynical.”

“Realistic. I grew up in the DDR, remember?”

We’ve a date with the supermarket, first. A chance for me to stock up on
some hotel beers. While Dolores fiddles around buying some foodstuff or
other. She needs to get her priorities right. After dumping our food
and drink we head to the festival.

Kout na Šumavě 12º
My first time trying this. Will it disappoint? So many have sung its praises. It doesn’t. Really nicely hoppy. Top stuff.

Eggenberg Tmavý Ležák 11°
Pretty dark, slightly roasty, not too sweet. OK. Not as good as the Kout, obviously.

Joe rolls up when I’m on my second beer. He has a couple of hours before
he needs to go home for a BBQ. Should be long enough. Always good to
meet him, which usually happens a couple of times a year.

Andreas Krennmair, a young Austrian living in the city, arrives soon
after with his Irish wife. He’s been investigating continental beer,
especially German beers, the way I’ve been looking into British beers.
We’ve never met before, but have had contact on the internet. Plenty for
us to chat about.

Another thing I love about this festival is the food.
Country-appropriate – so Czech stuff close to the Czech brewery stands –
mostly pretty good and not that expensive. I invest in a Czech sausage.
Like the Kout, it doesn’t disappoint.

It’s starting to get a bit crowded. Just time for one last beer. I guess I’ll make it something nice and light.

Maryensztadt Żywot Barley'a (22º Plato, 9.5% ABV)
An English Barley Wine, evidently. Sweet and gloopy as a Barley Wine should be. Full of alcoholy goodness.

Černá Hora Světlý Ležák (4.8% ABV)
I couldn’t pass this
one up. It’s the beer I was drinking when I first met Dolores. It’s a
lovely, light and hoppy beer, the type of beer they make so well in the
Czech Republic.

It’s about time for us to leave. But we’re still hungry. What to do next?

We’ve noticed a Korean restaurant on Warschauerstrasse. The food looked
dead good when we walked past. We decide to eat there. I get a big pile
of crispy fried pork on a bed of rice. It costs about threepence and is
more than I can manage to eat. I’m not about to leave something so nice.
We take the leftovers home in a doggy bag.

Last day at the Berliner Biermeile

The day begins with the same routine. A cup of tea in bed, then downstairs to perform some fast breaking.

Once again, I’m partially health conscious, eating a bowl of melon.

“After that, I deserve an extra couple of beers.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“And it was true, wasn’t it?”

“You always drink extra beers.”

“What made you so cynical?”

“Growing up in the DDR. Have you forgotten that already?”

Dolores has read that there’s a Sunday market just over the other side
of Warschauerstrasse she fancies taking a look at. No probs. Always good
to have an excuse to check out a new bit of the city.

We realise that the other side of Warschauerstrasse is much more
exciting. Lots of little ethnic restaurants, lots of cocktail bars. And
several bakeries which are even open today, Sunday. Everyone seems to be
having brunch in the sun. The tattoo and beard count is extremely high.
Bloody yuppies. Sorry, hipsters. The world has moved on.

We have a quick look around the market, where all sorts of second-hand
junk is being sold. A bit like Koningsdag in Amsterdam, but less mobbed.
Not that we intend buying anything. Not sure we could fit a record
player or a sideboard in our luggage.

Browsing done, we make for Frankfurter Tor. Where the Biermeile starts.
Being Sunday and only just about noon, it’s not that crowded. But,
judging by the rate punters are arriving, it won’t be long before it
starts filling up. Best drink quickly, then.

Talking of punters, there’s a much higher pensioner count here than most
beer festivals. It’s quite sweet seeing an old bloke buzzing around in
his electric wheelchair while drinking. Is that legal? The crowd is
really just a complete cross-section of society. Young and old, and all
the stages inbetween. Rich and poor. German and foreign. Drunk and well
on the way to being drunk. Sadly I’m not yet in either of those two
categories.

I see there’s a Czech brewery over the way. I’m not really into
excessive walking today so something from there will do. Despite the
sexist pump clips.

Pivovar Millénium Drsňák (12º Plato, 4.9% ABV)
I have fun trying to order this one by name. Czech loves starting words
with multiple consonants. Zmrzlina – Czech for ice cream – is a good
example. Then there are the words with no vowels. Is that even legal? An
amber Lager. Or polotmavé, as the Czechs say. Slightly sweet, but a bit
bland. A bit of nice hop bitterness right at the end.

Another sign this isn’t a geek fest: I’m the only one taking photos of
my beer. And making tasting notes, however brief and shitty they might
be. What’s wrong with everyone?

We start walking further down the festival, with me looking for something I fancy. Which turns out to be something German.

By the way, I’m drinking half litres of everything. If they sell them. I
hate pissing around with small measures. They mean too much walking and
queueing up at bars and not enough drinking. I’ve come to drink beer,
not take exercise.

I just can’t resist a classic Czech beer when I spot the Pardubický stand.

Pardubický Porter (19º Plato, 8% ABV)
Great to be able to drink this again. Nice and dark, tan head. Caramel,
malt, chocolate with just enough bitterness at the end. A great session
Porter.

“This used to be the strongest beer brewed in Czechoslovakia” I tell a
not particularly interested Dolores, “Not that I ever saw it, mind.”

Falkenštejn Tmavý Speciál (14º Plato, 5.4% ABV)
Served in a nonic, for some reason. Very roasty. That’s interesting.

Just time for one more beer. Another Czech one.

Kout na Šumavě 12ºIt’s still lovely.

We leave just after two, when it’s already starting to get a bit busy. I’ve an appointment, anyway. At Vagabund, over on the scary side of the city. I always feel oddly uneasy when in West Berlin. Never quite worked out why.

I’ve been invited over by Vagabund’s American brewer, Erik Mell. He
asked me if I’d like to come over and try his Broyhan. Only ever going
to be one answer to that question.

The Broyhan is darker than I expected. Very dry, with no sourness.
Though that seems to have been optional, depending on time and location.

Andreas Krennmair arrives. I told him yesterday we’d be trying the
Broyhan. He didn’t want to miss out, either. We get a quick tour of the
tiny brewery. The kit is just 50 litres. I have, literally, seen bigger
homebrew setups. A British guy about my age who was sitting in the bar
tags along with us. He seems quite happy to get a look inside the
brewery.

We have a couple more beers and then head back to the U-Bahn. But we aren’t going home just yet. It’s after 6 PM. Which means Augustiner will be serving cask. Not going to miss out on that as god knows when I’ll be in Bavaria again.

We take a seat inside. I ask what’s on cask. It’s Edelstoff.

“I’ll have one of those then.”

“Do you want a large or a small one, sir?”

“I’ll have a big one, please.”

“You do realise that means a litre, Ronald?”

“No, I didn’t. But I’ll have one, anyway.”

I order a couple of sausages, potato salad and cabbage to go with it. I
start to speak as I tuck not the cabbage, but before I can get very far
Dolores says “Don’t start with that being able to drink extra beer crap
again.”

The Edelstoff is wonderful. I’m not a huge fan of litre glasses. They
usually slow me down. Not this time. I polish off half in just three
gulps.

“Thirsty today are we, Ronald?”

As I’m shovelling down my food Dolores spots something. “Look behind
you.” Blow me. It’s a Buddhist monk having a meal. I suppose they have
to eat like everyone else.

When we get back to our hotel Dolores says: “Look at all that beer. You’re never going to get through it all before we leave.”

“That sounds like a challenge to me.” I say as I reach for my bottle opener.

We’re on our way home

I awake feeling totally knacked. It takes two cups of tea to get me out of bed. Even after a shower I’m not that lively.

The selection of fried stuff is getting narrower every day. Yesterday
there was no bacon. Today there are no meat balls, either. Still plenty
of fruit.

As I get tucked into my fruit, I start to speak, but Dolores interrupts me.

“I know, the fruit means you can drink more beer. You say that every morning, Ronald.”

Sorry for being so predictable.

Dolores takes pity on me and lets me lie in bed while she goes off
shopping. While she’s gone I get stuck into the remaining beers. Though,
come to think of it, I took back quite a few beers from Berlin last
year. In fact, it’s only a few weeks ago I drank the last couple of
bottles of Maisel & Friends.

She’s gone to the supermarket for some stuff to take home with us. And
the second-hand clothes shop she looked around on Saturday. She’s been
regretting not buying the dirt-cheap dirndl she spotted. Fingers crossed
that it’s still there.

I’m three bottles into my stash when Dolores returns.

She immediately tries to switch channels.

“I was watching that.”

“But it’s rubbish.”

“I know. That’s why I was watching it.”

Die Trovatos, if you’re wondering. Quality stuff that you’ll only find on TV on a weekday morning.

We spend the next hour packing up all our shit, while do my best to
reduce the weight of beer I’ll have to carry. Yet does Dolores thank me
for my consideration?

Once we’ve checked out and dropped off our luggage, we head over to east
of Warschauerstrasse again. It’s surprisingly busy for 12:15 on a
Monday. There are quite a few people hanging around the bars and
restaurants. Doesn’t anyone have to work around here? Though I wouldn’t
personally be sat outside eating on the bits of the street with the bad
drain smell. As some are.

Avoiding the stinky parts of the street, we have a quick pre-prandial
beer. I’m trying to work out what the place is called. The sign is
pretty cryptic:

Can you guess what it’s called? I couldn’t. It’s Plusminusnull.
Not sure about that one. I am sure what I’m drinking: a half litre of
Staropramen. Never my favourite. In fact the Czech beer I liked the
least, back in the good old days.

We were thinking of dining in a Sudanese place. We spotted a couple
yesterday. But the first one we come to is pretty small and cramped. So
we troll a bit further down the street to a Vietnamese place, bizarrely
called Soup & Rolls.

Unfortunately, they’re out of Hanoi beer. So I have to make do with a Saigon.

“Shouldn’t it really be a Ho Chi Minh City beer?”

“Very funny, Ronald.”

We kick off with a spring and a summer roll each. The spring rolls are
dead good. The summer rolls not quite as good as on Saturday. My main
course, crispy duck on fried noodles, is ace. Even though there’s quite a
pile, I shovel it down. Dolores has a beef noodle salad that’s also
pretty damn good.

Bags picked up, we face the long trek to Tegel. There are several
possible routes, none perfect. The one with the fewest stairs isn’t
practical. The M10 tram, as we discovered on Friday, doesn’t run all the
way through due to works on the track. So we plump for the
U-Bahn/S-Bahn route again. Despite all the stairs.

It’s all going well. Until there’s an announcement saying the train
won’t go any further than Wedding, due to a Polizei Einsatz (police
operation). Great. I quickly consult the network map. If we take the U6,
we can connect with the 128 bus. More stairs. Just what we needed.

We squeeze onto the bus. And have to stand. There’s a bloke sitting
nearby with a nose the size, shape and colour of a half-pound
strawberry. It waves from side to side every time he moves his head.

We check in dead quickly. It helps that I can use the short queue because of my Sky Elite status.

We’ve still some time. The terminal we’re leaving from is a bit shit. An
obviously temporary shed. So best be airside. Inside is pretty grim.
Doesn’t look like they’ve changed anything since the 1970’s.

Luckily, there’s a little pub just outside our terminal. In an old
S-Bahn carriage. I get myself a Kindl Jubiläums Pils. It isn’t great.
But it is wet.

Our flight starts boarding early. And is ready to leave early. But we
have to wait for 30 minutes for a air traffic control slot.

It is cheese in the sandwich on the way back. It looks just like the egg one. As is traditional, I wash it down with red wine.

The house is still in one piece. Unlike my Guinness. Alexei has drunk a
couple of bottles. It could have been worse. He could have got stuck my
Abt stash.

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